


Caveira's early days

by epicenelyapophenic



Category: Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six (Video Games)
Genre: Armed Robbery, Child Neglect, Homophobia, Other, Sexual Harassment, schoolyard bullying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-15
Updated: 2019-10-15
Packaged: 2020-12-16 23:11:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21044360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epicenelyapophenic/pseuds/epicenelyapophenic
Summary: How I envision Cav's life as a budding ruffian, and just before joining Rainbow.





	Caveira's early days

**Author's Note:**

> Thought of this while working on Radicals. Also, happy birthday Cav!

_São Paulo State, Brazil, 2004. Local schoolyard._

They've been harassing her ever since the school year started. Several times she's decked boys bigger and meaner than she.  
Yet everyone still wants to fuck with her just because of one little incident with another girl. Everyone thinks she's some sort of freak, a degenerate. Trash. She spends as much time as she can elsewhere, but her mother keeps worrying about her “truancy” issue.

As she walks out onto the playground, someone shouts.  
“Taina’s a dyke!”  
"Would you mind coming a little closer? I can't quite hear you."  
The kid is easily a third of a meter taller and several dozen kilos heavier.  
“I said you’re a pathetic perverted faggot dyke thing. You like girls.”  
“That’s not true... I mean... I..”  
“If you’re not a dyke show me you like dick. Suck mine. Show me you’re a woman and not a thing.”  
A circle of spectators has surrounded them.  
“Alright, come here. I’ll do it in front of everyone.”  
She smiles.  
Gasps come from their audience as the boy walks up to her, a dumb smile on his face. She kneels down, plays with his pants. He looks down just in time to see her fist impact his lower jaw.

“The principle will see you now, Pereira.” His secretary buzzes her into his office. She notices it has bulletproof glass.  
“Taina, uppercutting someone is assault. It's illegal, and it's just not right."  
“I don’t fucking think telling me to suck his dick to prove I'm not a lesbian is either.”  
The principal looks away.  
"Tell you what. You don't show up and make trouble, and I won't tell your mother you don't show up. You'll get straight As without having to deal with these clowns."  
"Sounds like a deal."  
“Alright. Let me escort you personally to empty your locker.”  
“I don’t need to be watched. I’ll do it and get the fuck out.”  
“I don’t need any more boys with broken jaws.”

_Rio de Janeiro, 2006._  
Taina and two kids — neither is older than ten — are conferring outside a convenience store. It’s her birthday, and she wants to celebrate it Taina Pereira style — with a full wallet and belly and maybe a little liquor too.  
"You two keep a lookout. I'll grab the loot. Be right back."  
Typical armed robbery. Get in, wave the gun around, get the fuck out.  
The door rings as she opens it. She makes a beeline for the candy aisle — the lookouts have to be paid — and grabs some cookies and eggs for herself, pulling out a bottle of liquor and placing it to be grabbed later.  
She walks up to the little enclosed counter, places her purchases on it as well as a little cash.  
“Is that everything?” the clerk asks as he adds it up, opening the till to get her change. He is an older man, in his late fifties, she guesses. He might put up a fight.  
“Not everything,” she says, pulling out a shiny pistol with what looks likes a crude suppressor made with rags and zipties. “Whatever’s in the till as well, buddy.”  
Before he can reach for his gun or close the till she reaches and slams his head on the counter several times until he seems incapacitated. Her open satchel swallows up the goods as well as the cash. She closes it, grabs the booze and makes to open the door when a young man walks in.  
“Get the fuck out of my way!” she yells, aiming her asbestos-silenced pistol at him.  
The kids are nowhere to be seen. Did they just get cold feet, or did they...?  
Walking down a covered alleyway she sticks the gun back in her bag.  
She sees her look-outs at the end.  
“Hey, assholes, don’t you know how to be look-outs? I fucking risked my ass in there and you two —”  
Men with guns are in the windows around them. One comes out.  
“They do know how to look out, Ms. Pereira, and in your case, I’d say they did so quite well.”  
The men’s uniforms all have skulls with crossed pistols behind them. 

Another authority figure’s office, she thinks. Although this one is an upgrade from the principal’s as its windows have armoured shutters. Surprisingly for a pig, the guy’s office has a lot of books and artsy things, a few masks. Maybe pigs and judges aren’t as dumb as she thinks — they did catch her. 

The man comes back with coffee. “You’ve given us quite a headache, Pereira. Not many sixteen year old girls run around waving pistols in people’s faces asking them for cash.”  
“Not many sixteen year old women.”  
“So you’re a feminist or something too? A radical?”  
“Not a fucking radical. Just an adult human being who wants to be treated like one.”  
The man nods.  
“I suppose an adult human being likes choices, then.”  
“One does, yes.”  
“So here are two. You either go to the reformatory, or you get to work with the men who picked you up.”  
“What an embarrassment of choices. Suffer in juvie hell or become a psychopathic enforcer of herd stupidity. Wow. I’m so honoured.”  
“Anyway, I’ll let you sit with your coffee and your choice, let both percolate through you.”  
“No need. I’ll join you. Anything’s better than being confined again.

Rio de Janeiro, 2008.  
It’s been a rough two years for Pereira. BOPE training was a lot harder and disciplined than she thought. Actually military style discipline and drills. Shitty food, no supplementing her pay through “odd” jobs.  
The other skulls annoy the shit out of her. The same kinds of kids who made fun of her for being different back in Sao Paulo do the same here. The same loneliness and rage burn inside her. At least she gets to return it on the sparring mat. 

When not on duty or in training, she reads. A lot. She started off reading local authors, soon got bored and looked for other stuff, finished the best of Portuguese literature — _The Book Of Disquiet_, for a time, being something like her bible — before moving on to Spanish and French stuff. Genet replaces Pessoa in her literary Pantheon. She soon gets called “Evil Bookworm.” That later gets amended to “Spooky Bookworm” when someone finds her copy of the _Book of Saint Cyprian_. On any given day, her locker is crammed with all sorts of books and paraphernalia relating to psychology and the occult — candles, books on Spiritism, medals of Saints Expedite and Christopher, rosaries. People give her her space now.

She finally gets deployed on something she considers worthwhile. They’re clearing out a bit of a favela in the west. The Pacifying Police Unit there has been having some trouble and requested that BOPE clear out the area. Threats seen include heavy machine guns, rocket propelled grenades and IEDs, as well as other small arms.  
“This is a high-risk operation requiring overwhelming force in confined areas, exactly the kind of thing we practice everyday. Let’s go, Skulls!”

In the APC her squad leader briefs her team more thoroughly. “We are responsible for this area, from here to here to here to here.” He points out a roughly quadrilateral region of the map. “We have to search and engage all violent criminal elements. Obviously it’s preferable to arrest... but you know how it is.”

Caveira makes a small wry smile.

“Don’t look at me like that, Skull. You of all should know how hard it can be to get these assholes to surrender.”

“It’s only hard because you kill your prey before playing with it. Have a little fun, and you might make more arrests.”

“You’re nuts Pereira.”

“What can I say? I’ve found something enjoyable to do with my life.”

Five minutes later they have their first arrest. Caveira notices the man’s cargo pocket concealment. Before he can draw, she has him on the ground with his hands zip-tied, her knife unsheathed.

“Tell me where your friends are and you might not die today.”  
The knife is a hairsbreadth from entering the man’s carotid. The woman in skull facepaint is impatiently glaring.

“Alright, alright, they’re in that light blue house two blocks down.”

“You heard him. Go get them.”  
She lets the perp stand up.  
“May I offer you a hint, friend?”  
“What’s that?”  
“Hide your piece better, and watch out for surprises!” she says as she sucker punches him in the stomach.

Washington DC, 2016.

Six’s office is an entirely new level of opulence. Caveira cannot believe that the likes of her — a slum kid from São Paulo — would be trusted to guard something like this. Central air conditioning, high-speed internet in every office, a klepto’s wet dream’s worth of crap to steal, books galore, a mini bar and coffee machine... wild.

“Pereira, your file comes with some... reservations. I don’t think anyone else in Rainbow history has had a PCL score this high, nor that many demerits on their file.”  
“Nor this number of arrests and cases solved.”  
“Well... true. Your service during the Olympics was also... as controversial as it was lauded.”  
“I get it. I’m a wildcard. Dangerous. Like Dirty Harry or the cop in Death Wish. Give me a chance, Six. You won’t regret it.”  
“We will... but know this. Every move you make, every breath you take, I’ll be watching you.”  
“Got it. I’ll always feel like somebody’s watching me.”  
Six laughs.  
“I feel like we’ll get along better than I thought. Anyone who appreciates eighties hits that much can’t be that bad.”


End file.
